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Tuesday, May 27, 2014

#1057: Scott Reed

We have no idea where Scott Reed is currently located or
whether he is still alive, but he used to be a force on the fringes of the self-help movement. Indeed, his 1972 book The
Miracle of Psycho-Command Power was central in the early promotion of the
Law of Attraction,
though otherwise apparently a poorly thought out ripoff of Psycho-Cybernetics and Think
and Grow Rich, augmented
with pseudoscientific information on handwriting analysis.
The book taught you for instance how to hypnotize lovers, control their actions
with your magic gaze, and cast spells, but these abilities seem not to have
become particularly widespread despite the apparent success of Reed’s book. The
book was described in Nate Gangelhoff’s You
Idiot, excerpted here.

Diagnosis: Who knows, but the book is at least among the
most ridiculous ever written.